Who Murdered Garson Talmadge (8 page)

Chapter 10

Sometime late last night, or early this morning, the fog had again sailed into Long Beach like a silent armada. Only, unlike the armadas of history, nature’s invading force had proceeded ashore to bring together cars that were otherwise trying to avoid each other. The damp shroud blanketed everything that existed within its domain.

As I approached the front of Brad Fisher’s building, the morning sun had burned off enough of the fog to bring into view the blurry red, then blurry green traffic light at the next intersection.

* * *

Brad and I got to the jail a few minutes before ten. On the short drive out, I asked Brad about his relationship with Captain Richard Dickson. Fidge had gotten it right, pretty much anyway. The two men’s mothers had been very close for sixty years. More like sisters than friends. Out of respect, each of the men called the other’s mother, aunt. Brad knew about the men in blue calling Captain Dickson, Two Dicks. When I said it, Brad smiled like he understood.

After we checked in at the jail and went through security, a youngish officer with a crew cut wearing a tightly filled guard shirt and highly-polished boots, the kind with toes hard enough to drop a recalcitrant inmate to his knees, jerked his head toward a hallway and then walked that direction. We followed his head nod, assuming it meant he would escort us to our client. He did.

If people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, why are they held in jail pending trial? Why do they need to post bail, when bail is allowed, so they can get out? Until convicted, they’re supposed to be presumed innocent of all charges, aren’t they? If so, they should be able to walk right out, subject to a legal obligation to show up for trial. I know. I know. The overwhelming majority, being guilty as charged, would find a hole somewhere or skip the country. But the point is if they are presumed innocent, why don’t they have the right to find a nice warm hole or to expatriate themselves? Innocent and free should go together, shouldn’t it? I’ve always wondered about that. As a cop it never troubled me, because the ones Fidge and I arrested we knew were guilty. The only remaining question being whether some silver-tongued shyster would twist the very rules of justice, against itself, or otherwise befuddle the jury sufficiently to make them see reasonable doubt—or at least its shadow.

The guard put us in one of the jail’s private rooms reserved for lawyers and clients to plan their strategies. Nothing sneaky, of course, no conniving, of course, everything legal, of course, just good old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness lawyering.

A few minutes later, Clarice was let in through a different door. She looked a bit better than when I saw her the last time. More resigned to her situation, accepting of it, deflated. Deflated better described her state of mind than accepting of it. Even her boobs appeared lower. I didn’t think that could happen with implants. Maybe her sag was just part of the going-nowhere-doing-nothing-incarceration slouch with which I was all too familiar.

Clarice’s personality also seemed flatter. Were bosoms and attitudes somehow related? Then again, anyone would get down staying in a cold, sad place filled with the sounds and smells of fear, not to mention gas and unwashed armpits.

She sat down. More like plopped down in a scarred wooden chair and lazily crossed her arms resting them on her lap. She had little to say in reply to Brad’s comments and questions regarding the legal proceedings. Her yes and no answers often expressed with a movement of her head rather than her mouth. That is, they were until we started discussing what she recalled about Garson’s time in Europe and his ex-wife. Not that her spirit perked up, her answers just necessarily got longer.

“My guess is his ex … Charlene, I think,” she began.

“Chantal,” I corrected, taking a seat in the remaining chair. I had remained standing while Brad and she had been discussing the legal mumbo-jumbo, as Brad had characterized it.

“Yeah. That’s it, Chantal,” Clarice said, “a classy name don’t you think? My guess, I don’t know, you understand, but my guess is she’d still be there. Every month Garson sent a check over to pay a lot of her bills. He never mentioned her moving. Then again, he never really talked about her much after we got married. As part of their divorce, Tally had agreed to pay that stuff for Chantal and her sister, as long as either of them lived. He wanted to be free of her before he applied for U.S. citizenship. He also gave her a big wad of cash on the front end.”

“How did he feel about having to put out all that money?” Fisher asked, loudly scooting his metal chair back on the cement flooring. My non-matching chair had wooden legs. Clarice’s chair was more like Brad’s only those two didn’t match either.

“It pissed him off to no end,” Clarice said. “Tally would rant and rave about how she had him over the barrel at the time. He wanted a quickie divorce, while she was in no hurry. The way he tells it, she bled him before giving in.”

“His will,” I said, having read it quickly before leaving Brad’s office, “showed a trust fund would be established to be sure those payments continued as long as Chantal lived, or her sister, Camille Trenet, lived.”

“I don’t think,” Fisher said, “I’ve ever known of a divorce agreement and will that provided, even on a contingent basis, payments to a spouse’s siblings.”

“That is odd,” I said, as if my observation added something substantive.

“Tally wasn’t a benevolent man,” Clarice said, “not in the slightest. So, when he told me about that one night after a few bottles of wine, I figured his ex knew something heavy duty. My opinion at the time was there was more involved than simply Tally’s desire for a quick divorce. I mean, he didn’t really need to be divorced first, at least I don’t think he did. He just wanted to be before entering the U.S.”

Right then, something slammed against the wall outside the door. I assumed our escort’s steel toed boots had been put to use. The noise settled down and we continued our discussion.

“Okay,” Brad said, taking a blank legal pad from his case. “Let’s talk about some new things. Tell us everything you know about his two kids.”

“What’s to tell? One boy, one girl, both adults, at least as to age. Susan’s an intelligent, beautiful and poised woman. She can handle herself anywhere in any company. Charlie is an empty suit.”

That had been my assessment as well. If the fast food restaurants sold men, he would have been the ninety-nine-cent special.

“He tries to be tough,” Clarice said, continuing her answer. “Tally pushed him in that direction. I don’t know why. But Charlie just doesn’t have it. Call his bluff and he fades. Not a bad looking guy, if you don’t mind his lack of brains and balls. Still, he often spoke of his doing some strong arm work for his father, but he always took along a couple of bonafide bouncer types when he did. He used to brag on it some. He was always tryin’ to puff up his image, little comments that always drew stern shut-up looks from his father.”

“And this was after the three of them moved to the U.S.?” I asked.

“Oh, sure,” she said. “I didn’t meet Tally until after they came stateside.”

“So these activities continued after that?”

“Yes. The most recent time was about a year and a half ago.”

“You know, they’re claiming your husband planned to cut you out of his will,” Brad said. “Drop you back to the prenup. Do you think Garson would do that?”

“Probably. But Tally is the type that would have told me the next time he got angry. And Lord knows the man got angry lots the last few days. So, no, I don’t think so. He would have thrown it in my face, and he didn’t.”

“Maybe he just decided that night,” Brad said, “just before he called Charlie. That would have left him no time to gloat.”

“Possible,” Clarice admitted. “Anything’s possible, but the order is still wrong.” Brad and I looked at her inquisitively. She clarified. “Tally always first bounced things off Susan, not Charlie. Tally knew she was the smart one. My husband respected brains. His son always found things out later, mostly after the decision had been made.”

“He did call Charles,” Brad said. “We have the phone records.”

“Then,” Clarice replied, “he called Charlie about something else, something routine.”

“No,” I said. “People don’t make routine calls at two-thirty in the morning, particularly not at your father’s age.”

“I don’t know,” Clarice said. “But I do know he never called Charles to talk about important stuff. Even when he thought he had made up his mind, he’d say, ‘I wanna hear Susan’s thoughts on this before I do it.’”

Brad and I looked at each other. It wasn’t that we didn’t believe her. Then I said, “What she’s saying fits with my take on the two kids.”

“I don’t doubt you, Matt, but that won’t cancel out the picture the DA’ll paint for the jury using those phone records, the kids’ testimonies, and his call to his attorney to set an appointment to amend his will.”

Brad looked hard into Clarice’s eyes. “Is Garson their father?”

Clarice didn’t move except for her eyes getting wider. The question was too plain to be misunderstood. For a good part of a minute, she stared back and forth between Brad and me. “Golly. Wow,” she finally said. “Where did that come from?”

“Okay. The question surprised you, but answer it,” I said. We waited, listening to the hum from a wounded light ballast, the only sound in the windowless room.

“He said so,” she began. “I had no reason to think otherwise. If not, he never told me. Why?”

“The prosecution will present a loving father and two children. Then you come along and marry the old man for his money. They’ll trot out the wives in the building to testify about your doing their husbands, also that you and the deceased fought regularly near the end. Then Garson wises up and calls his attorney screaming, ‘I’m going to change my will.’ Before he can, he’s killed. Juries, being parents themselves, don’t want to think kids kill their fathers for money. Somehow we need to tip over that cart. Setting children up as alternative suspects is dicey, but if we can just tarnish the kids a little, make them less likeable, it could help a lot.”

Clarice just sat there. Maybe for the first time getting a clear look at the mess she was in.

“Brad needs to discredit as much of that as possible,” I said. “Garson hadn’t told his attorney how he wanted to change his will. We can expect the jury to assume he planned to cut you out. Why? A man wouldn’t cut his children out of his will. Would he? Maybe he would, if they weren’t his kids.”

Clarice tugged on the fabric of her jail suit. Then she crossed her legs, without being provocative, although it was hard for Clarice to do anything without ringing man-bells.

“They have the phone records and Garson’s attorney’s testimony,” Brad said, picking up where I had left off. “I need to be able to knock some of that off kilter. Matt here will be working hard at finding out more about Susan and Charles. Also, about Garson’s gun running. What can you tell us about that?”

Clarice shrugged. “He always insisted he was out of that business, not that I completely believed him.”

“Why didn’t you completely believe him?” I asked.

“He would get some really serious phone calls, from Susan mostly. They’d talk French. I couldn’t follow any of it, except that I could tell it was serious shit. Also, Charlie sometimes flew to France.”

“What about Susan?” I asked.

“I don’t recall her going to Europe. But she drove up to L.A. I don’t think Garson knew she did that.”

“How did you?”

“She came by one day, just before lunch. Tally took her out on the balcony to talk, and their conversation was very animated. I stuck my head out to say I was going shopping. I drove up to Enterprise, just a few blocks, left my wheels and rented a car. I followed her.”

“Why would you do that?” Brad asked.

“Curiosity mostly, I don’t know, maybe they just talked in private when I was there one too many times. Maybe I was just being melodramatic. I started wondering what Sue did with her days. By the way, she hates being called Sue so don’t do that unless you’re trying to piss her off. Anyway, after she left college, I expected she’d take a job, but she didn’t. Tally always gave her, both of ‘em, plenty of money. Susan was appreciative; Charlie always wanted more. Truth was they were both capable of supporting themselves, especially Susan. That’s when I started figuring Tally had gone back to moving weapons, if he had ever stopped. Over time I just got fed up with the way he and his kids would look at each other and then talk French when I was around. That morning, my curiosity just got the best of me. I tailed her.”

“And?” We asked, nearly in concert.

“Susan drove up to L.A., out near U.C.L.A. on the west side. She parked in a lot near the Medical Center. By the time I got parked, I lost her in the busy Westwood shopping area. I was about to give up when I caught a glimpse of her rounding the corner onto Wilshire Boulevard. I’m not all that familiar with that neighborhood. I can’t recall whether she turned left or right on Wilshire.”

“What time of day was that?” I asked.

“By then, I’d say mid-afternoon, twoish or so.”

“When you saw her walking around the corner onto Wilshire,” I said, “was the sun at her back or in her face?”

“It was high,” Clarice said. “I can’t really say in which direction in relation to Susan. No. Wait a minute. When I got to the corner and looked up Wilshire in the direction she had gone, I had to squint because the sun was in my face. But I never saw her on Wilshire after she turned. By then she would have been more than a block ahead.”